So... £1bn for a few stretches of dual carriageway on a road that would be better served by average speed cameras and on a corridor that would be better served by a new, dual track electrified railway. Great

But what might a North Pennine Main Line actually look like or cost? https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1264213702963859458

Well, thanks to my special railway engineer crayons and a reasonable idea of how much railway stuff costs, I reckon for a new 90km main line railway paralleling the A66 (with 6 new stations) you'd be looking at £8.3bn (at most):

Seeing as money is literally free at the moment (no jokes), why not build a railway instead of a road? You know, because of induced demand and all that... https://twitter.com/DmitryOpines/status/1263728886782836736